


Death on two legs

by lesbianjackrackham



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Rachel Young has one (1) feeling, SI-5 Isabel Lovelace, greensboro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 19:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianjackrackham/pseuds/lesbianjackrackham
Summary: Isabel Lovelace doesn't come back from the mission.Rachel Young processes.





	Death on two legs

If there were any way to prove he did it, she’d kill him. She might kill him anyway.

But Kepler’s lips are thin and his eyes are hard, and Rachel knows he’s not capable of empathy or sympathy but he understands failure. This was a failure.

Something went wrong, and Isabel Lovelace didn’t come back from the mission.

Rachel stands at the back of the room, behind Mr. Cutter’s desk and just off to the side, and pretends to listen as Kepler gives his debrief. She’d already interrogated him as soon as he’d stepped of the ship, startling him with a flash of emotion beyond tepid annoyance. His words now—clipped, professional, dry—are going on the official record and then shipped down to the Black Archives.

She’s not technically supposed to be in this meeting, but Cutter didn’t even raise an eyebrow when she followed Kepler into the room.

And the thing is, she muses to herself as Kepler continues to speak; the mission was technically a success. They retrieved the scientist. The station is intact. There’s no reason for Kepler’s jaw to be so tight, or for his thumb to twitch like that. They’re awful tells, something he should have fixed years ago. That is, if anyone bothered to point them out to him.

(Those tells won Isabel thousands of dollars at the underground SI-5 poker tournament, and Rachel savored his fury for weeks.)

She’s still waiting for Isabel to poke her head through the door with a smug smile, like this is just another one of those pranks she was so fond of.

“What do you think, Rachel?” She snaps back into focus and sees both Kepler and Mr. Cutter looking at her.

“I wasn’t listening.” Cutter laughs; Kepler doesn’t move from parade rest.

“I was just wondering if you thought there was anything Warren should have done differently on this mission?” Ah. Rachel looks at Kepler and holds her answer back a beat too long.

“No,” she admits, turning away from him, back at Cutter. “From the logs and the report, it seems like Captain Lovelace disobeyed a direct order. Aside from… better earning the trust of his colleagues, Major Kepler completed the mission within parameters.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” says Cutter, and Rachel tunes them out again.

They walk out of Cutter’s office together, just a few minutes later, but neither of them turns to leave.

“You are going to get me incredibly drunk tonight,” Rachel says, finally. “And you will not speak a word.” Kepler opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and then nods. Good boy.

That they walk towards the same part of the building could not be confused for walking together; still, she almost appreciates the company.

\---

There’s a weapon sitting in the armory that one of her engineers fondly calls, “the melon baller.”

And that’s essentially what it is—a delicate, circular scoop sharpened around the rim, with even smaller electrical blades that allow the user to extract spherical pieces of a person’s body, one ball at a time.

This, Rachel thinks, is what it must feel like.

Isabel, or, the lack of her, has affected Rachel more than she would ever admit. But even a month later Rachel’s finding pieces of her at her apartment; a frozen pizza Rachel would never buy, a book with the corners folded in, clothing in the wrong size and style. They weren’t living together, but the way that they were living: things accumulate.

She gets rid of all of it.

Isabel’s former life had already been purged by Goddard staff, scrubbing away her records and false identities, her apartment and her accounts. There are no memorial plaques. There are no stars on the wall.

There’s no grave. There’s no one who would visit.

Rachel’s burned away parts of her own life before, entire histories and connections and feelings. But for the life she lives now—and the life they’re all trying to create for themselves—this is how it has to be.

The scar tissue is numbing, and it helps ease any wistful attachment. She filters Isabel out of her dreams with will alone. No one else she knows from that era is suicidal enough to mention The Woman That Was by name, though occasionally there are whispers of her feats: the Jell-O incident; firearm records broken by an unnamed agent; Goddard Futuristics Halloween Party 2009.

After three years, it’s like Isabel Lovelace never existed. And then Warren Kepler sends his first report back from the Hephaestus.

Cutter plays her the message after she’s sorted everything from the Black Archives, and she’s so eager for more information on the omega contingency that she doesn’t question Cutter inviting her to sit down in her own office. As Kepler’s voice fills the room, Rachel can feel her scar tissue start to itch.

According to him, a woman calling herself Isabel Lovelace arrived at the Hephaestus station just a few months previous, claiming to have been ejected in a makeshift shuttle by the previous mission’s Commander. Unable to make contact, she put herself into criostasis and hoped for the best

And there’s a tiny flame that thinks, _yes_ , before she says, “That’s not Isabel Lovelace.”

“Indeed,” says Cutter. “The question is: Who, or what, is she?” Rachel knows what she is. Her clearance is high enough.

Instead she says, “Where has it aligned itself?”

“With Warren and his team. Though apparently she is very eager to get to Earth.”

“Fascinating,” says Rachel, and it’s not a lie. “I’ll continue to monitor the situation.”

“Oh, no need, Rachel. All of Warren’s reports for this mission are going directly through me.”

“Sir—”

“Nothing personal,” Cutter says mildly. “I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop.”

“Of course, sir,” she says. He leaves her with the recording and whistles cheerfully on his way out the door.

“And Young,” says Kepler’s voice, “since I know Mr. Cutter has decided to… share my private transmissions with you: Isabel Lovelace says ‘hi.’”

Rachel allows herself a second of listening to the silence at the end of the recording before scrubbing it and sending it down to the archive.

\---

Nearly a year later, she follows the rest of them onto the Hephaestus. Everything, as she expected it to under Kepler’s leadership, had fallen apart. The man is missing a limb and one of his lackies—Maxwell, disappointingly; Rachel didn’t hate her—and one of the Hephaestus crew willingly shot himself into the star. Hilbert is dead as well, though her team completed his research well enough without him, and Jacobi and Minkowski easily fall in line under Pryce’s hands.

Then there’s.

Well.

Rachel's certainly not going to call her Isabel, is she? Though the thing’s certainly claimed her name and face easier enough.

“And her memories,” says the woman, staring at Rachel with more expression than she spared the others. “I have all of her memories.”

Her hair is longer, and that helps. She shouldn’t need help, but Rachel’s pauses are too long, her looks too curious.

That thing is not Isabel Lovelace

Still. She’s close.

“Rachel…”

“Ms. Young. You can call me Ms. Young,” says Rachel, collecting herself. “Whatever… I might have had with your original, don’t think I have any sentimentality for you.”

“It’s only been just over a year for me. And half of that time I spent trying to get—” She groans with frustration, cracking her knuckles in a nervous tick Rachel recognizes with a ping of familiarity. “Will you at least sit down? For a second?”

Rachel doesn’t sit, but she does close the door and turn off the recording devices she knows about. The woman purses her lips and sighs, tracking Rachel’s movement around the room.

“I know I’m not her. I know I’m not… entirely human. And I know that I’ve… mostly aligned myself with the Hephaestus crew, but that’s mostly because Warren is _such_ a fucking moron. How did he get worse? Plus, Minkowski’s not half bad. You’d like her.”

“I hired her.”

“Huh. Is this weird for you? I can’t tell.”

“It’s… odd,” Rachel admits.

“I hate that I’m struggling to get a read on you. I used to be really good at that. I used to be the best, other that Cutter. God, this is weird. I’ve had a shitty year, how about you?”

“Four years,” says Rachel.

“I remember everything,” the woman says again. “I remember… us. We were good, right?”

“We’ve never met,” Rachel reminds her. “No matter what your memories tell you—”

“You knew about this all along, right? The whole alien clone situation?” Rachel nods, and the woman leans back in her chair. “Well. I’m happy for you, I guess. This is all going to plan, right? Whatever Cutter and Pryce have been working towards this whole time?”

“We’re changing the world.”

“I’m happy for you,” she says again, and before Rachel can stop herself she says, “You were supposed to be with me.”

The woman who looks like Isabel Lovelace smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Well,” she says, spreading her fingers across the table, “here I am.”

Cutter is waiting for her outside of the room, and if she didn’t know him any better she might confuse the spark in his eye for sympathy.

“Well?” He asks, leading her away. “Did you learn anything?”

“No,” she says, and it’s the truth.

\---

Her last act is killing Warren Kepler, which would be satisfying if it wasn’t her last act.

It was his own fault for not finishing the job. In the end, like she always expected, it’s his arrogance that gets the best of him.

Still. She didn’t expect this level of betrayal from him either. She thought Cutter had him under control. Good god, what does this station do to people?

Rachel dies slowly, bleeding out in low gravity. The fury leaves her first; the anger at missing her life’s work come to fruition, her frustration at everything that had gone wrong already. Pain goes next.

She’s tired.

She mutters one last insult to Warren and closes her eyes to wait for it all to end.

“This is honestly sad.”

Rachel hums in agreement.

“You let Warren shoot you? Really?” The station shudders and Rachel opens her eyes, just a crack. Isabel stands over her, hands on her hips. She looks just like she did when Rachel saw her last, cheekily saluting her goodbye on the walk to the shuttle at Canaveral, joking with Kepler and the rest of their crew before vanishing from view. Rachel was at the launch because it was her ship they were taking: nothing more sentimental.

And if Rachel weren’t, well, herself, she might call it romantic that she’s dying in the same place Isabel did, all those years ago. If anything, she appreciates the symbolism. She never allowed herself to mourn, but now that she’s dying she can’t think of a good reason not to. She can’t even think of a good reason why she didn’t in the first place.

“I missed you,” she whispers, because there’s no one to hear her.

“I’m right here, you idiot.”

“You are.” Rachel smiles as Isabel bends over to check her wounds. “Hi.”

“Oh Jesus, you’re loopy. You’re probably going to hate me when this is all over, but you’re really messed up here and we don’t have a doctor so— Just trust me, okay?”

“I don’t…” Something’s wrong. She doesn't. This isn’t. “You’re…”

“Rachel? Babe, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t!” She sputters, twisting out of the woman’s grip. “Don’t—”

“ _You’re dying_ ,” says Isabel, and she can’t tell now, which one this is, face wide with panic and hands covered in blood. They share the same face, the same soft hands; the fear belongs to neither of them, and it frightens her. “This is it, don’t you get it? Everyone else— Cutter’s dead. Kepler’s dead. Pryce is…” She’s crying and Rachel is transfixed, watching the tears pool under her eyes. “You’re bleeding out and I can save you. We can figure everything else out when we’re back on Earth, but we can’t do that if you die, okay?”

There was a conversation, Rachel remembers, that they were supposed to have when Isabel came back from space. A conversation about who they were and who they could be, together. A conversation they weren’t able to have, because Isabel died.

She thought she was calling on a ghost, but there is no one here to accompany her to the other side. There's just death, or... this.

There's just Isabel.

“You died,” Rachel says, grabbing at the other woman's hand. They're both tacky with blood and it takes two tries but Isabel's grip is strong, and her pulse is stronger under Rachel's fingers.

“I know,” says Isabel, pulling her close. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> hi I'm gay for Rachel Young ~~(and Isabel Lovelace but I feel like that's a given??)~~
> 
> @leabianjackrakham on tumblr


End file.
